Officer’s loss is cause for reflection

The tragic loss one week ago of a young, bright and motivated Shreveport police patrol officer responding to a prowler call again underscores the dangers of answering a higher call to ensure the safety of friends and neighbors in today's fractured society.

Even as violence flares anew in Ferguson, Missouri, as that broken community marks a year since a black man was shot by a white police officer, Shreveport marks one week since the reverse of that tragic tableaux here.

Officer Thomas J. LaValley, a four-year veteran of the force, was shot repeatedly and died Wednesday while on a prowler call in the Queensborough neighborhood. A man sought on a warrant for an earlier shooting and attempted murder later was apprehended and arrested in connection with the slaying.

In such cases, it is hard to believe that a police officer woke in the morning with the thought in mind that he would shoot and kill someone – not that one could imagine, or fear, that they might have to do so. On the other hand, is it any easier to believe that a citizen destined to confront that officer over the course of the next 24 hours awakens with that same thought in mind?

This past weekend, hundreds, perhaps thousands of everyday people lined highways and clogged overpasses between Shreveport and St. Amant, in south Louisiana, to show their love and respect for LaValley, 29, familiar to many as a sports videographer for KTBS TV. The Ascension Parish native tried three times to get in the police academy, succeeding only on the last try, and he became his class's premier graduate. He was by all accounts an excellent police officer, a paragon of the community, a credit to the force, the media in which he had worked and the community from which he sprang.

His loss in a senseless, almost ambush-like nighttime shooting, is a reminder that national tensions between the police and the public take a back seat when tragedy hits home. It also bears reflection on just how thin the blue line is, the line of officers who offer their lives every shift to ensure the safety of their populace, even those who would do them harm.

Since the 1890s, almost 50 fire and police personnel have died in Shreveport, Bossier City and the surrounding area, according to past public accounts, agency memorials and a database maintained by The Times.

To date, 25 Shreveport police officers have fallen in the line of duty, all but four by gunfire.

The number of police officers killed in the line of duty jumped last year, a report by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund shows.

In all, 126 officers were killed nationally in 2014. That's a 24 percent rise from 2013, when 102 died. The number killed by firearms ballooned by 56 percent — from 32 in 2013 to 50 the following year. The Fund's mid-year report for this year, released before LaValley's death, showed 64 law enforcement deaths nationwide for the year in those first six month, a trend that if continued will result in 2015 ending with police deaths slightly higher than in 2014.

The people of Shreveport need to sit back and reflect on the loss of this young man, and others following his same dangerous call to duty as guardians and sentinels on the city's mean streets.